I'm a scarce commodity

I got accepted to University of Maryland Med School last week. I am now officially a short-timer. No picture could possibly express how I feel these days better than this one:

Beef's Wedding

My best friend from growing up got married over Memorial Day weekend in Chattanooga. I was a groomsman in the wedding. It was an awesome party. Good times with the whole Lloyd family in attendance. One of the bridesmaids (Liz) took over my camera at the hair of the dog bar on Saturday night and we got these pix.

Staci and Liz, enjoying themselves.

Staci, Johanna (Maid of Honor), Liz (bridesmaid), and Leah (friend of bride & groom).

I don't know where these pix came from, because I accidentally left my camera at the bar. Fortunately, Will Sheppard took it into custody so I didn't lose it, but I wound up with some random shots...

Steve, making faces.

Me and Liz, I guess this is from before I lost the camera...
Steve and...um...Steve.
Leah holds her head up.
Barbie gives the thumbs up!
The wedding party leaves the building by limo.
Bride & groom's first dance! Keith & Staci getting ready to cut the cake.

Cutting the cake...so symbolic!

Stuff it!

MMMM.....cake!

Beef Bachelor Party

We had a bachelor party for Keith at my family's Lake House the weekend before memorial Day. In attendance were Keith, Kevin, Me, Robert Finch, Martin Hoerner, Lee McGriff, Braden Pittman, and Steve Versaevel. We had a great weekend of cooking, eating, playing pool, a tool shower, water skiing, cliff jumping, and poker playing. There were no major injuries...only minor ones. More about that later.

Beef unloading the car stuffed with food & beer...a harbinger of things to come.
Mmmm. Steak.
Kevin & Keith....so excitable.
Everybody sitting down to a big dinner of steak and salad.
Awww.
1600 lbs of Man. We put a lot of strain on the old boat...
Keith cliff jumping at Chimney Rock.
Kevin doing the spread eagle.
And Steve, about to hurt himself...
Saturday's dinner was bbq ribs.
And Sunday's breakfast was french toast with banana's foster. That's how we all got so big...we love to eat! Nice.
Kevin had a little trouble getting the life jacket on...
Steve making it look easy on waterskis...
Beef, riding a little low in the water...
And a little tired after the fact...
But tearing it up here!

Here's a video of Keith doing the ski-drop thing.
And one gratuitous picture of me actually skiing.

Swamp Tour

At the wedding I made some new friends: Ryan and Rebecca. Ryan used to be Chris's roommate back in the day. Ryan and Rebecca were very enthusiastic about going for a swamp tour by air boat. Since I didn't have to be back in Gulfport until Monday morning I decided that I had time to check this out on Sunday night. So we drove out to Des Allemands, LA to get on with this program.

The fan boats have LEGIT motors...small block chevy V8 action happening back there. They are LOUD and they are pretty fast. Lots of fun.

Turns out Spanish Moss is also called 'Cajun Toilet Paper' who knew?

This is our fan boat on the levee between the salt and fresh parts of the swamp.

Nutria: Gnarly. And when you hold them up by the tail, they cry like a baby.

Me, in the back row with new friends Ryan and Rebecca.

Rebecca has a thing for alligators, which was a big part of the motivation for us to do this little tour. But when she was presented with the opportunity to hold one, she was squeamish at first. But she got used to it... Gator lovin...Another picture of Rebecca with the Gator. Good times!

Here are some videos:

The view from the Swamp boat.

Hicks Wedding

I came back to New Orleans this weekend for Chris Hicks' wedding. Chris and I were college roommates and lived together for most of our time at the Webb (3 and a half years, to be exact). I first met Chris's wife Jennifer at Joe & Hannah's wedding in Jamaica, and I really like her. She's from New Orleans and, just like that city, she is a lot of fun. She and Chris are just great together and it was awesome to be able to be there for their wedding. It was an action packed weekend. The rehearsal dinner was at the Sun Ray Grill down in the Warehouse District. John Sullivan who is Chris's best man, was there with his wife and it was the first time I had seen Sully since Webb. So that was a fun time catching up with him and meeting some new folks. The food was awesome and we had a round of toasts that was entertaining and endearing. You could really tell how many people really care about this couple. It was pretty special. After dinner we went out downtown and hit Lucy's retired surfer bar, followed by the Red Eye. I got to catch up with Chris's dad a good bit at the bar afterwards. He is such a character. I had forgotten how much fun he is to hang out with. Anyway, we told a lot of sea stories and generally had an awesome time. I had to bail out at 1:30 because, let's face it, I was intoxicated, and it was time to call it a night. But the dancing went on. I did manage to get some shots of the festivities, as follows:

Me, John, and Valerie Sullivan
Me, Hicks, and Hicks Senior
Hicks, senior, and one of Jennifer's friends (Angela)
Hicks, bustin a move on the dancefloor
Laissez le bon temps roulee!
No comment.
Hicks, sporting 'the look'. Nice.

Okay I didn't actually get that many (and by 'not that many, I mean almost no) pix of the wedding because there was a professional photographer there and I didn't want to be that guy constantly taking pix, but it was a really beautiful outdoor ceremony at Rosy's Jazz hall. There were a lot of gardenia bushes there and the smell was intoxicating. The food was incredible New Orleans style cuisine and the band was great. They actually brought the band down from Nashville which I thought was pretty darn cool. The preacher-man gave a wonderful homily at the ceremony and everybody was misty-eyed. It was great. If I get a link to the pro photos, I will post some of them, but for now, I got 2 more:

Me, Hicks, and Sully were the only 3 webbies in attendance to witness the 'Webb Institute' groom's cake. Shame on the rest of you for missing it.

Here's a video of the bride & groom doing 'Livin on a Prayer' karaoke at the reception. Awesome. Love it.

After the reception, I hooked up with Kevin and we went to get some grub at Jacques-Imo's where we got invited in for staff dinner. Long story, but it was awesome. Then we went to see Johnny Sketch and the Dirty Notes at the Maple Leaf bar. Overall, an epic weekend. Now I'm getting ready for a bike ride on the levee followed by dinner at the Gumbo Shop and then going for a fan boat tour of the delta. I'm on sensory overload right now...

Cochon de Lait

One of the best things about visiting New Orleans is the food. Hands down the best food I had here was the 'Cochon de Lait' sandwich. This is a pork po-boy sandwich which is made from pigs that are only fed milk, so they're extra tender. The sandwich is served with a sweet, spicy mustard and louisiana hot sauce. It's heaven on a bun.

Crawfish beignets. Nuff said!

Pascal's Manale

We went to dinner on Saturday at Pascal's Manale restaurant http://www.neworleansrestaurants.com/pascalsmanale/ which is a New Orleans institution. Their specialty is barbecued shrimp which they apparently invented. We had an hour and a half wait for a table and spent some time at they oyster bar shooting the breeze with the shuckers. Lindsay and Kevin helped us make sure we got the right mix of special sauce and we had a blast. We had a few doze oysters which were AWESOME. Here are some shots from the oyster bar:

Getting our shuck on.

The head shucker, Thomas, has been there for over 15 years and kept us entertained.

Me and Kevin getting ready to send one down the hatch. Lindsay supervises.

And...gone!

Parrish and Lindsay got barbecued shrimp, for which they needed bibs. Kevin and I tried the shrimp but we had other stuff....pan roasted seafood and crab/scallops with pasta.